Elegant Tarweed

These flowers only like the cool morning, this one is starting to close up for the day with the sun starting to shine on it.

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Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400, 300mm, ISO 100, f/10, 1/500, cropped vertically and minor adjustments

apani.hill

The undersides of flowers are an undiscovered country. I should shoot them more than I do. This is a great example of structure and the light, while a little harsh, suits the subject. Nice composition and simplicity.

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Thanks @_Kris for looking and I’m glad you think it works!

Another artful oeuvre.

It’s simple, has a straightforward story, is graphically attractive, and with a luscious background.

My only distraction is the lighter lower stem. Very careful dodging should fix that.

Namaste

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Thanks @paul_g_wiegman for looking and your comments! So by dodging do you mean selectively lowering the exposure on the bottom part of the stem? I’ll have to try that and see if I don’t ruin it!

Yes. In Lightroom Classic, when you have the “Develop” screen above the “Basic” block of sliders, look for the six icons. On the right is a dashed circle with a handle.

That’s an adjustment brush to raise or lower the exposure of a portion of a photo. When you click on that, a new panel opens with lots of sliders. At the bottom are sliders to make the brush larger or smaller and to adjust the feathering. Push the feather all the way left and size the brush just to fit the slender stem.

Go to the sliders above and push exposure left to about -2.

Now, move the brush with your mouse until the circle is on the stem at the bottom, hold the mouse click down (this may be a right-click button on a PC), and carefully move it up the stem.

The stem should darken.

Let go of the mouse click and go back to the new menu and adjust “exposure” either way until the stem is equal to the upper part.

It’s easy. You might want to enlarge the image with a command, or control + to make the stem larger and easier to use the brush.

Go for it!

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Thank you for the detailed explanation!

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Hi Vanessa,

The underside of a flower can be just as interesting as the top as depicted in your photo. The curling petals are an added bonus. Try Paul’s method for dodging the stem to improve the comp. Well done…Jim

Darkening the stem @paul_g_wiegman’s way will work but it’s not going to darken strongly enough the very bright hairs on the lower part of the stem. Any slopping over of the brush beyond the stem width will also darken the BG behind the hairs.

Another approach is to take advantage of the lightness of the BG in that lower part and do a quick mask that matches that lightness (as close as possible for the first step) and darken the BG to match the upper BG. Do the darkening by bringing down the right end of a Curve which will darken the light hairs as much as is practical. Then paint over the mask to refine its feathered/graduated edge and tweak the curve as needed. I pulled up a bit of the red channel to match the color better.

Not perfect, but as far as I know the best you can do without selecting each hair. The brighter areas could be cloned out. Then a composite layer could be done and some of the hairs from the top part could be cloned in.

Just a quick-and-dirty here, not perfect but you get the idea.

@Diane_Miller offers an alternative process with solves the problem of the bright hairs. She’s right, my solution works to the stem, but the hairs stay the same.

The easiest process is to make a horizontal crop, bringing the bottom of the frame up to the change in brightness.

It retains the tension of the subject being off center and accentuates the interesting shape of the flower/stem.